Disc Utility Mount Point?

[belltree]

I just replaced the 320GB drive in my 2009 Mac Mini with a new WD 750GB drive and am about to do a fresh SL install. I noticed though that when I go to the disc utility and did an erase that the Mount Point now shows "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" instead of just "/" like the below example screenshot (found on the web, not my actual system) shows:

I did a fresh SL install on my wife's new 13" MacBook Pro last week and the disc utility on her system also shows the Mount Point as being "/" instead of "/Volumes/Macintosh HD". I'm left somewhat puzzled as to why this is. Anyone care to take a shot at explaining this. Thanks.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Okay, I don't know the technical reason for this but here's my anecdotal evidence:

I have an internal hard drive in my iMac it has one partition, in Disk Utility the mount point shows as "/".

I have an external hard drive with 3 partitions, in Disk Utility the mount points show as "/Volumes/Partition 1", "/Volumes/Partition 2", "/Volumes/Partition 3".

Sounds like you have more than one partition on the WD 750GB?

 

[belltree]

It was as I suspected. What a doofus I am . It displays this way (/Volumes/Macintosh HD) before the OS is installed but once the install completes and it boots from the actual volume installed to it shows as expected as "/".

I came to delete this thread as soon as I discovered my silly oversight but you were to quick to reply...heh (too much beer tonight!). Anyway, I suppose it is good to leave in case anyone else wonders the same. Thank you for your support.

 

[J the Ninja]

/ is the root of the filesystem, your boot drive will always be mounted there. To avoid any complications for users or programmers who didn't know this is different from the usual /Volumes/diskname setup, OS X symlinks /Volumes/Macintosh HD (or whatever your startup disk is called) to / so it works anyway.

As for your current situation, I take it you are in the install DVD at the moment? Then in that case, the install DVD would be the root device, not your hard drive, so your HDD (Macintosh HD) simply mounts as an additional volume at /Volumes/Macintosh HD.

Did that clear it up?


EDIT: So actually, you weren't quite right. The difference after the install isn't that it had OS X installed on it, it was that you had booted off Macintosh HD rather than the install DVD.

 

[larkost]

If you are about to do an instal, you are probably booted from something else (like the installer DVD), therefore your drive is not mounted at root. /Volumes/Macintosh HD sounds just about right.

When you have installed and booted from it, then it will be mounted at root.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Interesting thread, even though it turns out the OP didn't have a problem I learned something and now have a better understanding of mount points. Thanks.

 

[imacky]

What a doofus I am .

I don't know what do I call myself. Did a quick search on Google and your thread was there to help me... took me a while to figure out what I was doing with my iMac.

What a doofus I am .